ABSTRACT
Reporting discrepancies between officially confirmed COVID-19 death counts and unreported COVID-19-like illness (CLI) death counts have been evident across the world, including Bangladesh. Publicly available data were used to explore the differences between confirmed COVID-19 death counts and deaths with possible COVID-19 symptoms between March 2, 2020 and August 22, 2020. Unreported CLI death counts totaled more than half of the confirmed COVID-19 death counts during the study period. However, the reporting authority did not consider CLI deaths, which might produce incomplete and unreliable COVID-19 data and respective mortality rates. All deaths with possible COVID-19 symptoms need to be included in provisional death counts to better estimate the COVID-19 mortality rate and to develop data-driven COVID-19 response strategies. An urgent initiative is needed to prepare a comprehensive guideline for reporting COVID-19 deaths.
Subject(s)
COVID-19/epidemiology , COVID-19/mortality , Disease Notification/statistics & numerical data , Disease Notification/standards , Bangladesh/epidemiology , COVID-19/diagnosis , HumansABSTRACT
Campylobacter jejuni is the leading cause of foodborne bacterial gastroenteritis worldwide. Bacterial typing schemes play an important role in epidemiological investigations to trace the source and route of transmission of the infectious agent by identifying outbreak and differentiating among sporadic infections. In this study, a double-locus sequence typing (DLST) scheme for C. jejuni based on concatenated partial sequences of porA and peb1A genes is proposed. The DLST scheme was validated using 50 clinical and environmental C. jejuni strains isolated from human (C5, H, H15-H19), chicken (CH1-CH15), water (W2-W17), and ovine samples (OV1-OV6). The scheme was found to be highly discriminatory (discrimination index [DI]=0.964) and epidemiologically concordant based on C. jejuni strains studied. The DLST showed discriminatory power above 0.95 and excellent congruence to multilocus sequence typing and can be recommended as a rapid and low-cost typing scheme for epidemiological investigation of C. jejuni. It is suggested that the DLST scheme is suitable for identification of outbreak strains and differentiation of the sporadic infection strains.
Subject(s)
Campylobacter Infections/microbiology , Campylobacter jejuni/classification , Foodborne Diseases/microbiology , Gastroenteritis/microbiology , Water Microbiology , Animals , Antigens, Bacterial/genetics , Bacterial Proteins/genetics , Bacterial Typing Techniques , Base Sequence , Campylobacter Infections/epidemiology , Campylobacter jejuni/genetics , Campylobacter jejuni/isolation & purification , Chickens , Cluster Analysis , Epidemiologic Studies , Foodborne Diseases/epidemiology , Gastroenteritis/epidemiology , Genotype , Humans , Molecular Sequence Data , Multilocus Sequence Typing , Porins/genetics , Sequence Analysis, DNA , SheepABSTRACT
Campylobacter jejuni has been recognized as the most common bacterial cause of gastroenteritis worldwide, in both developed and developing countries, since the late 1970s. A number of genotyping schemes have been developed to identify the sources and route of transmission of these foodborne pathogens so that proper control measures can be developed. In this review, we provide current genotypic schemes developed for Campylobacter spp. (particularly C. jejuni) over the last decades, along with an evaluation of the strength and weakness of these techniques and their applications.
